As the variety of available computing devices increases, and as the size of many of these devices decreases, people are increasingly utilizing portable devices such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other electronic devices to access information and perform an ever-increasing variety of tasks. In many cases, the information being accessed by a user of a computing device, and thus displayed on a display screen or other component of the computing device, includes sensitive information that the user would prefer not to be exposed to others nearby. For example, a user might access financial account information or personal health data and prefer that such information be kept private.
Even when the information is not necessarily sensitive or confidential, certain users prefer not to have others nearby “looking over their shoulder” viewing information or content being displayed on the computing device. For example, a user viewing a movie on a plane might not be able to enjoy the movie if the person in the next seat is also watching the movie. Certain conventional approaches, such as privacy screens, address at least some of these situations, but privacy screens are fixed and do not allow users to view content from different angles without removing the screen each time. Further, the clarity of the image can be affected by the screen even when there is no one else around to view the displayed content. For a user of a notebook or similar computing device on a plane, for example, the need to remove and store a screen-size filter can be a nuisance at the least.